Incredible value home Hi-Fi on the cheap with Tripath amplifiers

Sometimes I come across something that’s too good to keep to myself – and Tripath amplifiers are one of them.

Typically these days home audio has pretty much moved completely away from systems based on separates (Tape deck, CD Player, Amplifier, Radio and Turntable) to dock arrangements, or possibly home theater amplifiers paired with a 5.1 surround setup.

I still prefer to have two speakers and an amplifier for casual listening but find full size amplifiers unwieldy and a bit overkill when typically I’ll only have one device plugging into it – a PC or phone perhaps.

There are some great speakers with integrated amplifiers – like the premium offerings from Creative or Logitech. Often however, these come with sub-woofer speakers or have DSP circuitry that can colour the sound somewhat. Even if you opt for a flat response set of speakers, you are limited by what you have purchased.

Thankfully a middle ground is possible by buying a Class-T / Tripath chip based amplifier and pairing them with a pair of bookshelf speakers that suit your particular setup. You even have the flexibility of using speaker stands with these to help make a great solution for home music listening.

The Class-T is a very power efficient and compact amplifier integrated circuit (IC) created by Tripath who are now a part of Cirrus Logic and was named one of the twenty-five chips that ‘shook the world” by the IEEE spectrum magazine. Sony, Panasonic, Apple and Blaupunkt have used Class-T amplifiers in their products in the past.

You’ll want to source your speakers first – so check Amazon or eBay and search for bookshelf speakers. Make sure they don’t have an integrated amplifier and make a note of the specifications. Most of the speakers you find will be absolutely fine with any Tripath amplifier – just make sure that the expected input wattage is higher than the output wattage of the Tripath amplifier you choose.

From this point you’ll want to find a Tripath amplifier – this is somewhat unconventional as they are generally assembled by unknown Chinese based manufacturers – I’ve had a bit of experience with them so here’s what I recommend:

Buying via eBay is the best way – search for Tripath to begin with. Amazon do have Tripath amplifiers but they are more expensive there.

Make sure you either buy a 12v DC amplifier with a power supply included or source one separately.

Tripath amplifiers are available in either circuit-board form or cased – you’ll want the cased one.

You can pair up a lower wattage amplifier with speakers rated higher – the only caveat is that at high volumes they are more prone to distortion. I found for general listening a 20w amplifier worked very well indeed.

I tried a few different brands – I found Lepai to be the cheapest but prone to making a small pop noise upon turning the amplifier on – however many people are very happy with their Lepai amplifiers, and there are various modifications you can do to suppress this and improve the performance of these amplifiers.

MUSE, HLLY and Topping tend to use the same casing and the build quality is good enough. I personally had great experiences with the MUSE amplifiers.

Don’t forget to buy good quality speaker cable and any 3.5 to RCA cables you may need.

Example Setup

MUSE M15 EX2 (TA2024) 2x15W available for around £40 including power supply.

Yamaha ANSBP200PB – available for around £70 from Amazon.

You can of course go cheaper. This was very similar to the setup I had and I was very happy indeed! Tripath based amplifiers start around £20 upwards and it’s well worth researching online to see what people have opted for.

3 comments

My Indeed HiFi Labs amplifier TA2021 based amp is a cracking little unit. No pops when you switch it on or off, very well built and drives my Kef Cresta 10’s very nicely.

The key thing you need to be aware of when picking speakers is sensitivity (measured as the sound output in dB obtained with 1W of input power). Lower sensitivity speakers may not be loud enough with a Tripath based amp.

Funny that the TA2021 has an analog input. I would like to find a mono amp with a digital input so I can put it with the speaker (perhaps even inside) and run a digital cable to it or better yet, wireless. I will dig a bit for data sheets and see if Tripath has any digital input versions.

Topping TP30 has a built in DAC connecting it to my MAC over USB. Sounds good enough for desk top listening on less than 1 meter. I connected it to not so very sensitive B&W 805 matrix speakers.
I’ve got another one (SMSL) connecting an airport tot a musical fidelity dac, over a rotel pre-amp, driving another set of 805 matrix speakers. The latter amp is somewhat more powerful (25W rather than 20W) but the main difference is imho the pre-amp.
I think that eventually I’ll have my Rotel repaired: 200W or 25W is a real difference.